Saturday, 3 May 2014

Dog Day Afternoon - Patrick Mann

DOG DAY
AFTERNOON - PATRICK MANN

"Attica!
Attica! Remember Attica!? Attica!"

So shouts Al Pacino's character in the 1975 movie Dog Day
Afternoon as an army of New York policemen train their guns on
him. Al Pacino and his partner played by John Cazale have just held
up a bank but it's all gone horribly wrong. The bank was holding very
little money and now they're surrounded by police 'wanting to kill
them so bad they can taste it', so Pacino is now demanding a million
dollars and a jet airliner to fly them out of America in release for
the bank staff they're holding hostage.

Outside of the bank not only is there all the armed police but also
television news crews, photographers and reporters, along with
hundreds of spectators. Pacino is the centre of attention and in
shouting out 'Attica' he evokes the memory of an incident a few years
earlier when in a bid for political and civil rights inmates of a New
York prison rioted and took prison staff hostage. The police
responded by firing volleys of tear-gas into the prison and then
going in with all guns blazing. In the end, 42 people were killed
including 7 of the guards that were being held. Official reports at
first stated the inmates had murdered the guards by slitting their
throats but this turned out to be a lie. Everyone - inmates and
guards alike - had actually all been shot dead by the police,
sparking outrage throughout America.

For all fans of the movie this scene of Al Pacino shouting out
'Attica' is the most famous, his shouts being cheered and applauded
by the spectators outside the bank but met with embarrassed and
shameful silence from the police. And apparently, the whole scene was
improvised. It wasn't actually in the script as such and it doesn't
appear in the book but then it doesn't really need to as there's
plenty in Patrick Mann's novelization of Dog Day Afternoon that makes
up for it.

The film is without question a classic, capturing both Pacino and
Cazale at the height of their acting powers but the book is also very
well written though quite different from the film in many ways. The
film's main premise is that Pacino is robbing the bank to pay for a
sex change operation for his boyfriend but in the book this isn't the
main storyline at all. Pacino's character - in the film called Sonny
but in the book called Littlejoe - is robbing the bank in a bid to
escape to a better life away from joblessness, suffocating and
detested family, an unhappy marriage, as well as to help his
boyfriend have a sex change.

Littlejoe is a fantasist but what he does in the book - far more
successfully than in the film despite the Attica scene - is to hold a
mirror up to everything and everyone around him. From his parents,
his wife, his boyfriend, his associates, the police, the media, the
banks, the general public, society, prejudice, morality, politics,
and Vietnam. He reflects everything back on itself to show it in a
truer light and being set in New York in the early 1970s it's an
interesting time for this to happen.

In the book, Littlejoe mentions Attica but only in passing whilst
advising his hostages that the biggest danger to all their lives was
outside on the street in the form of the cops and FBI waiting there.

"Get it through your heads" he tells them "They
kill too".

His point is practically proved when he releases one of the hostages
only for that hostage to be almost blasted to bits by the police
armoury outside before being thrown to the pavement, a police shotgun
pressed to his eye, handcuffed and then hauled away.

"There," says Littlejoe to the remaining hostages
"there's your law".

The crowd of spectators seem to be on Littlejoe's side as they mock
and deride the police and cheer and applaud for Joe but that's only
until his boyfriend dressed in high heels and make-up is brought to
the bank by the police causing the crowd to realise that Littlejoe is
actually gay. To cries and shouts of "Faggot drag queen!"
and "Burn the faggots!" the prejudice of the crowd
erupts. The revelation of Littlejoe's sexuality, however, suddenly
brings out a whole new crowd onto the street bearing banners and
placards reading 'Gay is beautiful' and 'We love you, Littlejoe'.

It's all very fast-paced and slickly written, pulling in new ideas
and scenarios effortlessly and very subtly. At one point in the book
Littlejoe is sat in a bar listening to the conversations going on
around him:

"Every
president is a thief. Every prime minister and king is a crook."

"Who are
you to go against the rest of the country, something special? We
elected him President. So he's a thief president. But, shit, he's our
thief."

"... and
it's thieves like you who want a thief in the White House. Otherwise
his ass would've been out of there so fast it'd make your head spin."

"You
better believe it, buster. Thieves like me and fifty million others.
Why should we elect some honest square to front for us? We want
somebody just like us, and boy, have we got him."

"What
about the honest people?"

"Let 'em
wake up and join the show."

Though not mentioned by name, it is, of course, Nixon that is being
discussed.

The interesting thing, however, is that whilst Littlejoe is an
unscrupulous thief, adulterer and ultimately a bank robber, he is
actually trying to be a good person but all he can see is hypocrisy,
lies and double standards. So what hope for him, then? What hope for
anyone?

Dog Day Afternoon as written by Patrick Mann is a novel based in part
on the screenplay written by Frank Pierson; the film being directed
by Sidney Lumet who encouraged his actors to improvise and stray from
that script.

Frank Pierson won an Academy Award for his script, Sidney Lumet was
nominated for Best Director and Al Pacino nominated for Best Actor.